Good morning. Thank you Kassanna Dwight for bringing this up on Facebook and I hope she doesn’t mind me taking it a step further.

I’ve done quite a few posts on interracial romance in books and since the last one I did, I’ve seen a lot of changes. IR seems to be hot at the moment with more people writing them regardless if they are people of color or not. A lot of the storylines are similar, Caucasian billionaire takes a girl straight from the hood and treats her like a queen. Sort of like Pretty Woman but the female MC in there was white and the ladies in our stories aren’t prostitutes. And then there’s also been a small boom in m/m interracial which makes me very happy since I write a lot of interracial gay romance.

However with any boom, especially in the publishing industry, there comes problems. As I mentioned up top, the same storylines, the misrepresentation of characters on covers as well as some of the terms and/or dialogue used in stories. Now, I’m not going to gripe here. The more interracial romances there are the better. We need more diversity in all genres whether it be romances, sci-fi, horror, children’s books, whatever. The world is not fully one color and the publishing world should reflect that. Still, when we do these romances, we as authors must take into account who reads these stories. Again, not everyone is schooled on how every culture is. We don’t need to be, because again every culture is different. You can’t base characters or settings on what you see on television. Every black person isn’t from a bad neighborhood, they aren’t always poor, and they don’t talk slang. Every Asian isn’t meek or overly suspicious, nor is every Hispanic person a hot head or an illegal alien. While it’s true some minorities fit the so called “mold” not every person of color is the same. Think about it, a lot of people take what they see on TV or read as the truth and when you paint people in a certain light you run the risk of offending them.

Here’s another thing; you’re not going to write the perfect book that doesn’t offend someone because everyone takes things a different way. In my own book Something About Jayden, the person reading found my comments about Caucasian blonde to be troublesome. Not only that, he or she said my character was a racist because he wanted to work for a minority own company. Even though I didn’t find any issues with this, the reader did and as I stated you run that risk every time you put pen to paper. If I can answer to that without pissing anyone off, I’m a black woman married to a Latino man. I have a biracial child so I know a little bit more about Latino culture than some. A lot of minorities whether they be black, Asian, or Latino want to support their own. That’s not true in every case, but in my character’s life, he felt close to his heritage and wanted to support a minority owned company. I don’t see an issue with bringing that out but again, it’s all how someone takes it.

In thinking about what I’ve wrote and read, I’m trying not to sound hypocritical. While I do love the boom in IR, I just want people to look closer at what they say. I’ve read books that bothered me when I see things like the white mc saying he or she had never been with a black person before or even a black character asking the white character that question. Or even the assumptions that all black characters talk slang. Unless these characteristics are essential for the plot it isn’t needed. I’ve used it myself with black and white characters from the south to give it a little “color” but even those things could bother a reader while they peruse your book.

So what am I saying here? Be more conscious in writing interracial romance and how you show your characters but don’t let the “unknown” or fear of getting it wrong bother you. Just don’t make assumptions. Write this character the way you want but don’t dumb them down or make them a “lesser” being because of their differences. While some stereotypes are true of some people of color they aren’t the norm. If they aren’t going to be used to advance your plot, you don’t need them.

I hope this post clears up some confusion about interracial romance. Keep writing them and hopefully, multicultural and or interracial won’t be a “fringe” or boom, it will be mainstream.

Blurb:You can never tell a book by it’s cover!

On the surface, Isaac Bridges has it all; wealth, a beautiful wife, and a successful career. But deep down, he desires Denton & Associates back under his family’s name and a male lover he can call his own.

Enter Jayden Demario, a handsome college student looking to make a career in advertising. Underneath the pretty exterior, Jayden is a very damaged young man. Thrown out on the streets by his stepfather at 15, Jayden’s only concern is to make something of himself to move his “madre” from the tough neighborhood.

Jayden has no time for love, especially not with a closeted married man who runs the company he interns at and Isaac can ill afford to out himself to the homophobic CEO at Denton.